


first times a bust

by riverray



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 09:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20871881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverray/pseuds/riverray
Summary: Jack attempts to shave for the first time. Dean catches him in the act. Father/Son bonding ensues.





	first times a bust

**Author's Note:**

> My first time posting anything... anywhere. Ever. Probably bunch of mistakes. Things might not add up. I love SPN but I won't lie I don't watch episodes in chronicle order and have missed a ton. So if I messed anything up lemme know!

Jack stares down quizzically at the razor blade in his hand. It looks very sharp on the business end and he wonders how someone can just almost absentmindedly take it across their face in swift motions without cutting themselves. The magic of humans, Jack thinks. 

He’s alone in the bathroom, the door closed for good reason. He didn’t want the others to know what he was doing. Not because he felt he was doing anything wrong per se, he just felt like this kind of thing called for privacy. And… he was a little embarrassed. 

He had seen Dean and Sam do this countless times before, Sam more so than Dean, and had even seen Castiel do it which really surprised him cause shaving seemed so human. Cas didn’t heed to the needs of a human. He didn’t have to sleep, eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. Yet he shaved. When Jack questioned him on this he simply said the vessel he was in still grew hair quite often and that he didn’t like the itchy feeling of it. So he put forth the effort to keep his vessel clean shaven and hair short. Jack could understand that but it made him mindful of the fact that Cas's look wasn’t how he truly looked. It was so easy for Jack to forget that Cas had a whole other form. A true form. A rather large and almost monster like form, Sam had tried to explain it to him. 

But anyways, back to shaving. Even though Jack had showed some interest in the act of shaving, his dads hadn’t really said much to him about it. When Dean had seen Jack stopped at the bathroom door looking at him with his head cocked to one side he had simply chuckled and said “don’t worry about this with that baby face.” 

And that was that. 

And Jack didn’t ask further because honestly they had bigger fish to fry. But lately they had been spending more and more time in the bunker. Cases were oddly enough more local recently so they didn’t travel too far. And it was kinda driving Jack insane with boredom. So now he thought was as good as ever to explore the humanly task of shaving. 

When he looked at himself in the mirror he noticed he lacked the fuzziness the others usually got when they did this. He felt his face. It was smooth and rather soft and he frowned at that. Why couldn’t he be like them? He knew he was far younger than them but physically he was grown. It didn’t make sense. 

He applied the white foamy stuff anyways. That made him laugh a little cause he wasn’t expecting it to feel so funny in his hands. When he applied it to his face to give himself a white beard he smiled. He looked like Santa! He put some more in his hands and smeared it on the mirror. He then began to draw a silly face with his finger. So far shaving was fun and easy. He didn’t understand why his dads didn’t do this more often. 

Eventually he got back on task and picked the blade back up. It all seemed pretty self explanatory. Just… scrape the white stuff off with the blade side… right? Jack noticed a lot of white beard had kinda vanished, leaving a thinner layer but whatever he hadn't used much anyways.

Jack brought the blade to his face slowly, feeling a bit nervous for some weird reason. He waited a few moments, thinking there was nothing to it, he had seen the others do it so many times, just get on with it.

So he squeezed his eyes shut tight and quickly pressed the blade into his cheek and pulled down. Hard.

This was NOT how Sam, Dean, and Cas do it…

He gasped out loud and jumped away when his face started stinging in the most unpleasant way. When he opened his eyes his mouth formed in a surprised ‘O’ when he saw a gush of red mix in with the white cream sliding slowly down his face. 

“No!” Jack whispered yelled to himself and his eyes stung from the pain shooting up his cheek. This stinging, burning feeling didn’t feel like getting hit or stabbed. It felt… annoying. And he didn’t want to touch it. Blood flowed off his cheek and onto the vanity and Jack wondered how the hell he went wrong.

“Stupid!” he said to himself and tossed the razor into the sink as his shoulders slumped. That’s when the door to the bathroom opened without a knock nor warning call and Jack wasn’t surprised to see a wide eyed Dean pop his head in. Dean wasn’t a knocker, unlike Sam or Cas. Jack’s other cheek was red now as well but not from blood, just embarrassment. It was bad enough he screwed up and now that Dean knows? Just great. 

When Dean saw Jack’s face his jaw dropped a bit and without a word he stepped into the bathroom and gently closed the door behind him. He pursed his lips together, his eyes darting to the razor in the sink and Jack’s injured face. 

“…first times are always a bust,” he joked lightly and gave Jack a tentative smile. Jack looked away, feeling like Dean’s attempt to reassure him was a lie.

“I bet yours wasn’t.” He replied a bit grumpily and Dean stepped forward and grabbed a nearby towel, wetting it with warm water and motioning for Jack to face him. 

Jack did, pouting underneath the foam and blood as Dean gently grabbed hold of his chin and encouraged him to tip his head back. When the warm towel hit Jack’s bloodied cheek, the boy winced. 

“Shaving cuts are always a bitch, huh?” Dean told him lowly as he continued to dab as gently as he could, “Something about the bite of a razor blade. There’s nothing like it.” 

“I feel stupid,” Jack replied in a grumble, averting his eyes away from Dean. 

Dean looked at him briefly before putting his attention back on the cut, “don’t. Like I said… first time is always a bust.” 

“…Even yours?” Jack asked cautiously, truly curious. Dean frowned a bit, “well… maybe not a bust. I was… pretty young.”

“How young?”

“I can’t remember. My, uhm… my dad was with me. He taught me before I went at it myself. So the first couple times I shaved with him, it was successful. It wasn’t till I did it myself, rushing to get outta the house, I had a bust.” 

“Your dad taught you? You didn’t just know?”

Dean scoffs out a chuckle as he presses the towel into Jack’s sliced cheek. The boy winced again. “Of course not. No one just knows. My dad taught me and I had to teach Sammy. And Cas actually.”

“…will you teach me?” Jack asks quietly, almost afraid of the answer. He looks up at Dean, catching his eye and Dean looks at him before nodding, “course kid. You know… Sam did the same thing.” 

“Cut himself?”

“Bad. The friggin thing left a nasty slice for awhile. You can’t really see it now but if you look hard enough it’s still there. I caught him too.” Dean winks at the last part and pauses to wipe off the access shaving cream from Jack’s other cheek until the boy’s face is clean. Well, minus the blood still gushing a bit down his cheek. Dean instructs Jack to hold the towel there while he bends down to dig through the cabinet under the sink for the first aid kit. 

“What do you mean you caught him?”

“Sam tried shaving for the first time on his own. He was too rough though. I heard him cry from the bathroom and when I went in he was holding his blood chin. He was only 9.” 

“Wow,” Jack said genuinely interested. “Do 9 year olds get hair on their face?” 

“Well, uh, no.” Dean replied, standing back up with a grunt as he digs through the first aid kit for a bandage. “But Sam.. he wanted to be like me.” 

Dean dabs Jack’s cut again until the slice doesn’t bleed for only a moment before he quickly places the bandage over it. 

A moment of silence passes before Jack quietly says, “me too.” 

“Hmm?” Dean hums, putting all the stuff back in the kit and shoving it back under the sink. 

“I wanna be like you,” Jack says, almost to himself as he looks at himself in the mirror and touches his bandage gently. The sentiment causes Dean’s breath to hitch an he suddenly feels a bit overwhelmed with, dare he say it, emotion. “And Sam. And Castiel. But I always mess up.” 

“Hey,” Dean says seriously, standing up right and nudging Jack’s chin gently with his knuckles, “look at me, kid.” 

Jack obeys but he looks small and fearful. Dean sighs and and places a hand on the kid’s shoulder, “you gotta stop being so hard on yourself. You’re… young. Really young. And it’s not a bad thing. You’re gonna make mistakes. And thats not just a you thing. That’s an everybody thing. Sam, Cas, and I.. we’ve made more than we can count. And we’ll make plenty more to come. But just cause we make mistakes doesn’t mean it gives us the right to beat ourselves up so badly, okay? Sam’s first shaving experience was a bloody chin and bandaging he had to wear to school. And Cas was in a grown man’s body learning to shave. He would’ve had 100’s of little cuts all over his face had he not healed them every time he nicked himself. By making these mistakes… you’re already like us, Jack.”

Jack blinks at him, taking it all in before a small grin grows on his face, “really?”

Dean smiles back, patting his shoulder, “really.”

Dean doesn’t expect the impact of a hug as Jack wraps his arms around his middle quickly. The kid has become more affectionate lately it seems and while Sam and Castiel take the hugs and what not with a sense of readiness Dean is still yet to be considered ‘accustomed.’ 

But he can’t dismiss that it’s not a bad feeling. Every time the kid does something so… kid like… Dean gets this weird, warmish feeling in his chest. He hasn’t felt it quite before. The only thing he can compare it to, he thinks, is the fatherly like feeling he had with Ben. And then it’s just coupled with a bit of heartache. 

He hugs the kid back. It’s almost becoming automatic at this point. And when Jack pulls away he’s beaming at Dean, bandaged cheek and all. “So you’ll teach me how to do it right?”

Dean gives him a half smile and ruffles his hair a bit, “sure kid. But another night. It’s getting late and you should probably be in bed before Sam gets all mother hen.” 

Jack raises an eyebrow, “he hates it when you call him mother hen.”

“Which is why I love it. Now get, I’ll pick up here,” and with that he gently pushes the kid towards the door, stepping in front of the sick to run the water over the leftover bloody foam. 

“Dean?” Jack says from the doorway.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

Dean pauses, not meeting Jack’s eyes as he nods, “sure thing, kid. Goodnight.”

“Night.” And with that Jack’s footsteps fade down the hallway and Dean’s left alone in the dimly lit bathroom with the faucet still running over a now clean basin. After a moment, he turns the sink off and stares at himself in the mirror where he takes notice of a nearly dissipated silly face written in foam staring back at him. He can see himself through the drawing and he lets out a low sigh. After everything they’ve been through, all the shit the four of them had endured, all the chaos Jack has been exposed to in the short time he’s been alive…

Dean prayed the kid wouldn’t ever be like him. He hoped better for the boy. That maybe… maybe he’d alway find it in him to draw silly faces rather than sad ones. 

Cause when Dean took his finger and turned the faded smile into a frown he thought, at that moment, he and Jack couldn’t be anymore different. 

And he prayed it stayed that way. For Jack’s sake. Because as much as the kid had annoyed him the beginning, as much as Dean had wanted to do away with him, was harsh to him, and had hated him….

Dean loved that kid now. Like he was his own. And he’d give anything for Jack to be different. 

Anything.


End file.
